The photo below is Wyot wondering if she could drive us instead of having to sit on my lap for 4 hours. There was no more room in that car.
Art festivals are new to me. There are lots of trade-offs to consider when doing one. First there are the fees, the travel expenses and time. Putting up the tent alone is a pain in the pitutti taking at least 90 minutes. Hanging all the work could take as long again. Every morning we changed the set up trying different looks. We were up at 3 am to set up for the Shadsyside Art festival this August. It must have been the hottest day of the year and the muggiest because our hands were so sweaty we couldn’t hold the poles to fit them together and my husband got sick and needed a shower just to cool down. All this before 6:30 am in the morning.
Wyot ready to drive us to North VA Art festival
I borrowed my brother’s car and we packed it so full there has no room for our dog let alone our suitcases. What a great brother!!! What a happy dog. We ended up putting the tent on the roof and still there was no room.
To top it off we had a lousy location at the end of the show and the tent was sloping downhill and the sun poured in on us all day.
Wyot waiting for us to finish taking down the tent, artwork and packing the car.
This was our first art festival. Most of the other vendors were very accomodating and helpful. Some were positively hateful but I think that it is the anomaly and not the norm. People had a good time.
Happy Family
A week or so later we traveled to Reston, VA for their art festival. This was a much bigger event than Shadyside. Still we had a lousy spot, The Ghetto, we were told. The street not only sloped downward it also sloped sideways and it made me feel woozy.
We had 40 mph winds. Our tents were close to our neighbor to help keep everything from blowing away. Again, Wyot was a big hit.
Wyot was so tired at the end that she didn’t care where or on whom she slept. Other than eating one of our neighbor’s pieces of pizza she was great. In her defense it was way past her dinner time when we finished taking down the tent and packing the car.
We met some really great fellow artists and hope to see them again some day.
I think the festivals have a learning curve. We are still learning but we plan to do more next year.